Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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In The Reactionary Mind, political scientist Corey Robin articulates a common thread that runs through all right-wing ideology. Robin starts from the observation that “conservatives” are a coalition of people who believe irreconcilable things:
Stop picking that nit, it’ll never heal.
American political discourse is sticky. It gets all over the place and it’s damned hard to dislodge. People in handcuffs all over the world demand their Miranda rights, and people arguing about social media all over the world are prone to saying “it’s only censorship when the government does it.”
In 1841, Graham’s Magazine published Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and, in so doing, created the modern detective story genre.
A lot of regulations went up in flames in the Reagan/Thatcher era: labor laws, environmental rules, finance frameworks. But the most consequential shift of the age was the change in antitrust law, specifically, the advent of the “consumer welfare” standard that supposed that monopolies were mostly totally amazing, miracles of coordination and efficiency that would make all our lives better thanks to the singular genius of the men (and a few women) who led them.
Continue reading "Anything That Can’t Go On Forever Will Eventually Stop"
In August, a small group of vocal, angry Idahoans targeted the Boundary County Library, demanding that the library purge 300 books on a list of “inappropriate” materials that circulates widely among right-wing conspiracy groups.
Boundary County Library didn’t have the books that the conspiracy theorists were angry about. Nevertheless, the group harassed and threatened the library staff, demanded the removal of the library board, and continued to target library staff even after they quit their jobs.
These conspiracists are part of a small but vocal minority of people who’ve been hoaxed by deep-pocketed right-wing media barons, who have propagated a lie that libraries are full of “groomers” who expose children to “inappropriate” materials as part of a program of sexual abuse.
Every accusation is a confession. The upper ranks of evangelicals and the Catholic Church are filled with pedophile abusers; as is the slate of MAGA election candidates.
The “groomer” panic is all astroturf. It’s a cynical ploy to whip up scared and easily confused people and point them at libraries, and not just libraries that have Genderqueer on the shelf or host Drag Queen Story Hours. They’re targeting all the libraries.
They’re targeting the very idea of libraries.
For most of the modern era, most people in the rich world have been poor, just like their parents and their children. Social mobility was more dream than reality. Most people were born to serve, as were their children.
The ruling minority liked to imagine that the human oxen laboring in their fields and the women who cleaned their homes and cooked their meals were happy with their lot, and professed shock and horror whenever these hereditary servers sought out ways to improve their station — whether that was by joining the industrial revolution or striking out for a colonized land and the promise of stolen estates and downtrodden servants of their own.
Lazar: Tevye! Tevye, I’m on my way.
Tevye: Where are you going?
Lazar: Chicago, in America.
Tevye: Chicago, America? We are going to New York, America.
Lazar: We’ll be neighbors. My wife, Fruma Sarah, may she rest in peace, has a brother there.
Tevye: That’s nice.
Lazar: I hate him, but a relative is a relative.
In the opening scenes of the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, the narrator, Tevye, introduces us to his village of Anatevka, which is a pretty fraught place where people are unhappy and danger is on the horizon. Nearly three hours and (spoiler alert) innumerable indignities and terrors later, Tevye and his neighbors leave the village, all to go their separate ways.
Continue reading "How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms"
They’re called “anti-features”: artificial limitations built onto the products we buy. These are limitations no customer asked for — and indeed, they’re limitations customers would pay to remove — if only they could.
The first anti-features were “DRM” (Digital Rights Management), like the “region-locks” on DVD players that stopped you from using a player you bought in one country to play back a disc you bought somewhere else.
Continue reading "How to Fix Cars* By Breaking “Felony Contempt of Business Model”"
Since late 2000, EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has made steady progress, and now, despite US Big Tech companies’ illegal lobbying, it has become a law.
“Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.” There, in eight simple words, we have Michael Hudson’s key insight into the role debt and debt cancellation plays in the rise and fall of human civilizations.
Debts are inescapable.
In order to provide a society with its necessities — food, shelter, energy — producers need the inputs (seed, fertilizer, materials, tools) before they have the means to buy them.
In order to produce, producers must borrow.
Continue reading "Bankruptcy protects fake people, brutalizes real ones"